"That's what I figured. AR doesn't have anywhere near the juice of REW blogs (at least here in Atlanta) so I don't know that would be time well spent."

The Google Alert I have set up for "Active Rain" has sent me this thread on REW (realestatewebmasters.com) a couple of times. ActiveRain.com doesn't have the juice that REW blogs have in Atlanta Georgia?

In the thread a member of both REW and ActiveRain wrote of ActiveRain:

"I gave it up when I realized the SEO benefit of REW blogs and forums probably far out weighs AR. I have dropped to 4 now but who cares. I would rather spend my time in here with all of my new found SEO friends instead of talking about "Why agents shouldn't bring their pets to open houses" on Active Rain. LOL. Don't get me wrong, there are some great content writers in Active Rain, but most are spammy point-generating posts that have 0 value."

Now there's an ActiveRain.com entry I have not visited for awhile! Note: no dog ever went to an open house!!!! Rumors of ActiveRainers pooches attending open houses are totally overblown.

The thread about Active Rain on REW is kind of garbled. Some of the participants are talking about featured agents within a market on ActiveRain.com, others are referring to what posts get featured on ActiveRain.com.

Googling for 'Atlanta homes'.... to me that is how you find out who has the juice... will someone on REW in Atlanta come up first? Or will the featured ActiveRain.com agents in Atlanta Georgia come up first? The original question on REW is:

"Active Rain

Both of the featured agents on the homepage are from Atlanta.

Anyone know what the criteria is to be the featured agent on the AR homepage?"

Google gave me a link to the person who is asking the question on his ActiveRain.com account. He is an ActiveRain.com member! His ActiveRain blog came up first, before the featured agents. Before his blog on REW. Before his other blog (I assume he has another blog... wouuldn't it be a prerequisite?)

The moral of this story?

ActiveRain.com has juice (traffic, search and it pops up on Google) but don't take your dog to open houses or talk about people taking their dog to an open house.....and if you want to discuss SEO you should be on REW rather than ActiveRain.com? Or not.

Information is deemed to be accurate but should be verified to your satisfaction. Information provided herein is supplied by several sources and is subject to change without notice. Opinions expressed are solely those of Maureen McCabe.

This will be my last comment in this thread, sorry I cannot contribute here any longer so please if you have anything specifically to address to me I cannot answer it here and you will have to email me or ask over at REW, the reason being I received a very nasty email from the author of this particular thread demanding that I stop commenting (As a member in good standing at AR) in a thread that is specifically about myself and my company.

This author for the most part was able to remain very civil and nice to the public but I have to say behind the scenes what a nasty person. I have never done anything to wrong Maureen McCabe nor have I violated any ettiquette or AR rules in responding to questions regarding my company that comment posters made on a blog she started about my company.

As the owner of Real Estate Webmasters, am I not the most qualified person to answer the REW specific questions that come about because of you starting this thread?

As an AR member am I not entitled to post relevant comments that are on topic and helpful?

Why would you not want me commenting here Maureen - I am the only one who knows the facts about REW.

Are you upset because your little article didn't turn out the way you wanted it to? You don't get to be the star of the conversation and control everything so you flip out and start emailing people privately that aren't saying what you want them to say, or agreeing with you?

The sad thing is, is that before receiving the email, I was really enjoying this thread and it was prompting me to contribute even more to AR - Myself (And many others) likely have a lot to offer this community, and people like you basically telling us to get lost do a disservice to Active Rain as a whole.

I was going to leave this alone, but I keep getting notification that more and more people are talking about Real Estate Webmasters in a thread that the author has demanded I no longer participate in. I wanted to make sure users did not think I lost interest, disappeared or something. I am here on active rain any time you wish to contact me, and I am also "Webmaster" at REW Forums stop by any time.

Morgan Carey wrote: "I was going to leave this alone, but I keep getting notification that more and more people are talking about Real Estate Webmasters in a thread that the author has demanded I no longer participate in. I wanted to make sure users did not think I lost interest, disappeared or something. I am here on active rain any time you wish to contact me, and I am also "Webmaster" at REW Forums stop by any time.

I am done with this thread"

Hooray. Sad excuse. Go in to each and every comment you have made via edit (I think above imakes 9 comments here) and unclick the "Notify me of new comments:" simple as that. Now do that before you get notified of more comments. I will be responding to Lenn and Bryant.

You should have left it alone. You were asked to stop commenting. You were asked privately.

Bryant: Thanks for stopping by. It is kind of lenghty to read all the comments, especially if you click all the links, sign up for REW, read all the REW forums so you too are an SEO expert, write a blog on REW, test your SERP..... Personally I'm just talking about people talking about ActiveRain and I am exhausted by the thread. The first thread on REW about ActiveRain was just sour grapes about ActiveRain.

There is no reason to be rude. You brought this on by writing the post. If you don't understand that the REW blogging platform is better to get your message out to consumers because it ranks higher then you just aren't very bright. I have tried thoughout these comments to be as nice as possible, but, your tone is just downright ugly. I'm very glad that you don't represent the AR community because it wouoldn't last very long if you did.

Ironically, your zest for AR and ingnorance of what you have had to say has led many people to sign up for REW and talk to me privately about your rudeness. Sort of funny, I think.

Lenn: Your timing sucks. I still love you. I appreciate your comment. I am sorry Morgan felt your comment was license for him to comment after I had asked him to stop commenting here, privately. I got a loooong (can you imagine that?) email from Morgan wondering if I was really asking HIM to stop commenting. I sent him an email confirming that I had asked him to stop posting comments to this entry.

I believe that is my right. I could just delete Morgan's comments. People have been asking me for days why I have not deleted his REW commercials and the rest of the comment spam here in this entry.

Morgan has carried on a monologue in the comment here since Friday. I don't see where anyone was talking to him, Morgan was not responding to the thread, he was just advertising REW. This is a conversation that does go in a hundred different directions but IMHO you could remove all that Morgan wrote and the thread would make sense. Others may have got something out of Morgan's comments. To me Morgan's comments were the commercials where we all scatttered to the bathroom or went to see if there was anything to snack on in the kitchen. One or two would not have been a problem. He has 7? 8? comments before I asked him to stop commenting.

This is about Morgan, not to him, this does not require a response from him. Morgan feels the need to defend REW. This was not an attack against REW but you'd hardly know it from the comments. I can't imagine Matt, Caleb or Jonathan defending ActiveRain on REW or elsewehere. Why would they need to? Morgan can post on his forum about how nasty I was asking him to leave, how arrogant I am, how condescending I am.... He can write a post on AR about how poorly he was treated here (conforming to AR community guidelines of course on the bottom of each and every page on ActiveRain) this entry is not his platform.

Lots of people I know from AR have come here and said nice things about REW, a number of people have signed up for REW. People on AR who had never heard of REW have signed up because of this entry.

The thread I picked up on via Google Alerts is gossip. The second thread on the REW forum about this entry is gossip. The thread about you Lenn is gossip. The members of REW can tell themselves they have hard core, hard hitting he-man conversations about SEO and nothing more but they are gossiping about ActiveRain and it caught my eye and tickled my funny bone.

When Google sends out alerts that say:

"I gave it up when I realized the SEO benefit of REW blogs and forums probably far out weighs AR. I have dropped to 4 now but who cares. I would rather spend my time in here with all of my new found SEO friends instead of talking about "Why agents shouldn't bring their pets to open houses" on Active Rain. LOL. Don't get me wrong, there are some great content writers in Active Rain, but most are spammy point-generating posts that have 0 value."

and

"Anyone know what the criteria is to be the featured agent on the AR homepage?

You just get picked...not a giant rhyme nor reason...sign up and read the thread. Some have tried for a long time...others featured even admit they are honored but have no clue!"

and " No question - by the way is this Mike or Jenn or is it both of you?"

it is funny. The Google alerts made me go see what it is all about. Traffic! You can see in the thread in their forums that they are excited about getting traffic from this entry.

On ONE of James T. Boyer's ActiveRain accounts there's an entry "Active Rain VS REW Blogs SEO." Many of the REW members who visited this entry were responding to his blog not mine. James T. Boyer has three lonely comments on his entry... Yet the REW people came here and respond to James T. Boyer's blogs entry.

Again thanks for your comment Lenn. I appreciate your input. I am sorry about the timing but you sure had no way of knowing I had already asked Morgan to stop.

Ryan: This is ActiveRain not the forums on REW. This is my blog. This is not a debate. You may think I am rude. You wrote on the REW thread about this entry more than once that you were done with this thread. Be a man of your word and leave this thread behind. Thanks!

Let's see, you talk about another community in a way that you clearly don't understand and you don't think the owner of the other place has the right to respond?

O.K. I get it. It's only alright if it fits what you want it to say. By all means post away if you like it! But, if it makes you look bad or people think you don't understand then you don't want to hear it.

This is a public environment and you started these comments. Your blissful ignorance rings very clear!

I'm also done with this now. Congratulations for taking what was an informative topic for readers and turning it into a personal gripe because the outcome you thought was going to be the case turned out to be incorrect. An intelligent person would have learned. Some did I suppose. You act like you hold stock in AR and you are personally offended by the thought of a better ranking platform.

You know what would be fun? Starting an REW blog post in your market and have it outrank anything you do just because you have been so rude! Blog value only matters if it actually gets read by consumers. You can get on the phone or email your friends if you want to chat. If you want to reach consumers, you need to rank. That was the point of this right?

As for REALTOR mag - they are antiquated at best when it comes to technology and there is politics involved. The fact that they would recommend a blogging platform that doesn't get a REALTOR's message out as well as nother platform should be an excellent indication of their competence!

Ryan: Next comment from you will be deleted. In fact maybe after I read your last comment it will be deleted. Why waste your time that way? This is not what is valued on ActiveRain. Slamming one another may be all the rage on REW. Go back to REW and post in the forums. Post an entry here about how I should not have blogged about REW. You can write all about how "You brought this on by writing the post."

I am invoking the Kathy Sierra dinner party rule on my blog "We LOVE to hear from you, and we think of this blog as a big dinner party. Y'all are our invited guests, but if you're being rude and obnoxious we'll let the bouncer toss you. So please, stick to debating and criticizing ideas rather than personal attacks."

Not that I am saying you are being rude or obnoxious.... I think you might be but I don't think I would say it here publicly but I just happen to have that paragraph handy.

What you don't understand is that you are talking about someones privately owned company, that person responded to you as your facts and statements were clearly wrong. Your are correct that you could just delete morgan carey 's posts to your blog about his company, but would that be the right thing to do?

The right thing to do if you did not like the way that this conversation was going would have been to A) Shut up and let the blog die a quiet death, or B) Delete the Blog and forget about it, or C) Be nice and post the facts then shut up and let the blog fade as people will loose interest in a blog that you are not sensationalizing.

This is not a competiton, and it never should be a competition as both AR and REW have much to offer the Real Estate professional who chooses to use them. Though AR has less to offer the Real Estate professional who is not on the first page for their state.

Now I expect that you will delete this post so go right ahead if you are into the censorship thing.

Just remember it is also possible for AR to remove the entire blog.

Best of luck to you and all who have put the time in to read this long and drawn out blog and the comments on it.

Oh, and stop sending private messages, and e-mails to people demanding that they stop commenting on the blog, and asking others to come comment on the blog and trying to tell them what to say. It is rude and should not be done.

Hopefully people who want to debate ActiveRain vs. REW will take their conversation to your entry.

I have not checked out what you have linked in this comment so still may delete the last comment from you. I would have hoped after your outburst about ignorance the other day that you would have realized that you were no longer welcome to comment here.

Morgan can post about his company where ever he wants to just no more in the comments on this entry. I did not mention Morgan in the blog, just because it is about REW does not give him rights to carry on a monologue in the comments. I did not name Ryan or any of the others. I've let you all have your say. This was not a debate about ActiveRain vs. REW as much as all of you want it to be.

Here's a conversation on AR about different blog platforms that got wild last fall. The Tomato Blogs vs. Real Estate Blogsites vs. RSS Pieces Blogs. The participants got contentious and Bill French felt the need to make it members only. Comparing Blog Platforms The part of the title about "schizophrenic" was added later the crazier it got.

Free platforms for real estate blogs compete too. I think Matt, Caleb and Jonathan are too busy for the sort of stuff that REW does. I think AR blogs had a different approach to get people blogging here. Did you watch the video on Inman Friday with Matt and Jon? It is posted on the official ActiveRain blog.

What about not worrying so much about an seo and worry about posting some decent blogs to help consumers and help agents. If we focused more on this would the other not take care of itself? Recognition and where we rank is fast taking over the reason we are here in the first place, to close transactions.

Maureen - I was going back and reading some of your previous posts. (You are active rain royalty and I knew I could learn from you.) I found this one quite interesting. Some of the stuff, admittedly was foreign to me, but as for juice I got it. AR does have great juice, not grape juice. I can type in key words for my primary areas here and find myself in the top 2 pages almost every time. Active Rain is a great community and it's great for business.

It does not matter where the points came from. .I have always heard that where you are in life is the sum total of the books that you read and the people you associate with. You obviously have good associations.

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